Birth Week 2021, Redux: Kanaskat-Palmer State Park

Today, after multiple postponements of a delayed "Birth Week" activity because she couldn't  join me in April, Laney and I finally made it to my "Birth Week State Park" of her choice: Kanaskat-Palmer State Park. Shobhit also joined us. We couldn't do it during my actual Birth Week because Laney was still retirement-traveling elsewhere in the country, as she had been doing since January. But, she is back in Western Washington for the summer, since early July and until the end of September, and so we initially scheduled our visit to a Washington State Park of her choice on Sunday, July 25. That had to be postponed because of her hip and knee injuries, the latter, as it just so happened, being exacerbated by her getting out of her van in just the wrong way when we had our Happy Hour on July 8. Her healing process has been very time consuming, resulting in another one of our intended twice-monthly Happy Hours this summer (to make up for virtual ones we were unable to schedule in May and June) being canceled, as well as her inability to attend the SLGC Reunion in person on Saturday July 24. We kind of barely managed to do our Happy Hour on Friday, August 13, which I had hoped to do at "Patio Cielo," the rooftop open-air deck at Mercado Luna, on Pine & Summit. They actually closed the rooftop that weekend due to a heatwave, which was all good for Laney at that time as she preferred to meet at Volunteer Park anyway, where she could move just a few feet from her parked van and sit in her lawn chair in a grassy area. She's been taking it easy for weeks now, and even today's trip was tentative for a while, pending the status of her healing injuries. She still couldn't do a lot of walking, but I was delighted that at the very least, we were able to make it work, finally. And, even though it's now been fully four months—a third of a year!—since my Birth Week, I have still included today's Kanaskat-Palmer State Park photo album in my Birth Week 2021 collection. It was the state park Laney had chosen for my initial plan for Birth Week 2020 before the pandemic fucked up all social plans for that year, after all, without which Laney would have been part of my Birth Week proper with this park. (She still did take part in Birth Week 2020, when I pivoted that year to "Birth Week Virtual Quarantinis.") Also, because this was always intended to be part of my Birth Week, when we finished lunch today, Laney said "Happy birthday!" to me. Which did take me a second as it was rather unexpected to hear in August—and then it made me laugh. Oh, right. The visit to Kanaskat-Palmer this weekend itself was rescheduled, as it happens, as I was initially supposed to be going to Auntie Rose's memorial today, until earlier this week it was officially postponed (also again) to October 2. And Shobhit has a party to go to tomorrow for his Project Management Class, and he wanted to come to the park with us and also needs the car tomorrow, so I asked Laney if she could move it to today instead, and she was able to. I'm so glad we were finally able to make it work. It turns out this particular state park has special nostalgic meaning for her, because when she used to live in Renton many years ago, she used to bring Jessica there. Laney said this was when Jessica was in the sixth grade. I can't remember how much younger than I am Jessica is, but I think it's maybe, five years at most? If that's the case then we'd be looking at somewhere around 1993 that Laney is talking about, maybe 1994. She said Jessica always loved getting in water and would get into the river at this park, including one scary moment when she told Jessica not to go out further than a particular rock, which she did anyway, and then nearly got carried away by the current. Laney said she cut up her feet rushing out into the water to catch her, but she made it. Anyway, most of our time at the park today was just at a picnic table having a picnic lunch. Shobhit and I brought all the refreshments: a kale-based salad with a few other vegetables as well as a Costco salad mix added; a mix of chopped fruits (Shobhit kept calling it "fruit salad" but it did not include whipped cream); and samosas, which he made this weekend mostly for tomorrow's party (which I am not invited to, incidentally—classmates only, on top of vaccinated-only). I also made myself a veggie ham and provolone sandwich to bring, though; I always want my picnics to include a sandwich. Those are the rules! The three of us spent a lot of time venting about moron anti-vaxxers. Shobhit mentioned at one point that all of us were just preaching to the choir, which was true. Laney even walked with us a little bit, after we finally took our cooler and bags back to the car, along a trail that ran close-ish alongside the Green River. (This is now the third state park I've visited through which the Green River runs; the other two were the two parks I went to with Tracy the last day of my Birth Week proper, Green River Gorge State Park and Flaming Geyser State Park.) She soon said she needed to sit on a bench we passed, though, and told Shobhit and me to go on ahead and she would wait for us. So, Shobhit and I went further on the trail until we found a small offshoot trail that took us to the banks of the river, and I was able to get several very nice photos. You can see the full photo album on Flickr here. They are all captioned now. After we walked back to where Laney was waiting, we soon thereafter left the park and headed back home again. Just a quick and unrelated note about yesterday, since there was no Daily Lunch Update (DLU) as usual: that's because it was the day I had my "Leading for Racial Equity" all-day training, which lasted from 9 to 5, with only about a half hour break for lunch. And I must say, I had good expectations of it already based on other staff who had already done it on one of the other dates, but it notably exceeded my expectations anyway. There's a lot to say about it but I just don't have my thoughts on it quite organized at the moment; it's all very complex. Except, perhaps, to say that I found the whole day very well organized and effective, and I was happy to be in a group where there really wasn't any "white defensiveness." The group of staff in that training was more diverse than I might have expected as well, with two Black women, two other women who identified as "mixed race / Black," one Asian man and one Asian woman, and one woman who has been at PCC even longer than I have who identified herself as "mixed race, Chinese and Scottish," a specific clarification I'm not certain I had heard before. Actually, I probably have and just forgot. Anyway, I may be forgetting one or two other people of color who were in there.  The day began with introductions that asked us to specify our name, what we do for PCC, our preferred pronouns (this marked the first time I publicly stated that I accept any pronouns, although I still said that if pressed I go with he/him; no one else in the room was anything but either he/him or she/her), how we "identify" in terms of race (a term I also had not had used as part of this question before—I noted that I identify and am socialized as white—and what our expectations were of the day (I said I hoped to learn something; and I did). Anyway, I may very well refer back to that day for one reason or another in other posts as time goes on. Suffice it to say that our general consensus is that PCC has a lot of work to do in this area, but this felt like a pretty great start. The people of color in the room pretty much uniformly had positive things to say about it, and in this particular context it seems best to defer to them. I even had kind of an interpersonal breakthrough with the woman who is currently our receptionist, who happens to be Black, regarding something that had nothing to do with this class but which provided a sort of bridging opportunity. My typically standoffish demeanor clearly had her thinking I did not like her, which created a sort of perpetuating cycle that felt more and more awkward as weeks went by—as in, it got to the point where she actively avoided eye contact with me—and then one of our activities in this training found us as the only two people in a particular discussion group, where we were tasked with discussing "power dynamics," of all things. It was the perfect opportunity for me to finally bring this up, and we cleared the air (although we had already finally found ways to chat with each other already over the past couple of weeks; we just never directly addressed the awkwardness that had occurred up until then).  Anyway, the entire day was an incredibly positive and productive experience, I thought. My only concern is that it not be the end of the work PCC (including me) does in this area. As I said, I think of this very much as a jumping-off point to an ongoing process. [posted 9:24 pm]